TANNER SUPPORTS LINE-ITEM VETO TO CUT SPENDING

But says accountability is first step to address $8.3 trillion debt

WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives agreed to give the President line-item veto power to help cut wasteful spending from federal legislation. The President’s line-item veto could be overridden by a simple majority vote of both the House and Senate.

Congressman John Tanner supported the bill but noted the President has failed to use similar powers already at his disposal.

“The line-item veto can be a helpful tool for controlling spending and balancing the budget, just as it has been used in Tennessee for years to ensure the state government lives within its means,” Tanner said. “It can be very beneficial to ensure taxpayer money is being spent properly.”

“This President, however, already has a similar tool called rescission, which allows him to strike provisions from any legislation and send it back to Congress, but he has not used this power to eliminate the record-high deficits the government has been running since he came to office. The President has also threatened several times to veto bloated spending bills completely but has never exercised that power, either.”

Additionally, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has not held the Administration accountable for how it spends the money appropriated to it, Tanner said. Nineteen of 24 federal agencies cannot provide a full audit of how they spend taxpayer money, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Tanner introduced legislation requiring Congressional hearings whenever Inspectors General, the Office of Management and Budget or the Government Accountability Office identifies waste, fraud and abuse in an agency’s budget.

“The first thing we need to do to turn this country’s finances around is to find out where the money is going,” Tanner said. “Congress, under its current leadership, is abdicating its constitutional duty to provide oversight of how the Administration is spending taxpayers’ money.”

The federal debt is at a record-high $8.3 trillion, and the federal government has run record-high deficits for four years in a row. Most of the additional borrowing is coming from foreign sources.

Tanner, representing Tennessee’s 8^th Congressional district in West and Middle Tennessee, serves on the House Ways and Means Committee. He published a report in April on the impact of the government’s fiscal recklessness, titled “The Consequences of America’s Debt on Our Economic Future."

# # #

Contact: Randy Ford, 202.225.4714